


color like this morning

by meteor-sword (vaenire)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Multi, Nail Polish, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28370835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaenire/pseuds/meteor-sword
Summary: Hakoda glanced at her other hand, still gripping the box. He recognized it then-- Kya’s nail polish box.“I don’t know if you should be playing with that,” Hakoda said. Then he saw Katara’s instant frown, and felt how Sokka pushed more of his weight onto his hands on Hakoda’s leg, and he backed off. “Hey, that’s okay.”“Can I paint your nails, Daddy?”“Oh…” But Katara was looking up at him with that big frown again as soon as she scented an incoming ‘no.’ “What color did you have in mind?”
Relationships: Bato & Hakoda & Kya (Avatar), Bato/Hakoda/Kya (Avatar), Hakoda & Bato & Katara & Kya & Sokka, Hakoda & Bato & Sokka & Katara, Hakoda & Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Hakoda & Katara (Avatar), Hakoda & Sokka (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 72





	color like this morning

Hakoda was relieved to finally be able to sit on the couch. After a day spent in his workshop tweaking the designs on his latest invention over and over, his shoulders were tight and his lower back ached from sitting too long on his workbench stool. 

He turned on the TV and sat back, peaceful at last for all of three minutes before little footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs. He saw a shock of brown hair zip through the hallway through the door beside the television, followed by another. 

“What are you two up to?” he called, hoping to not be forced from his spot on the couch. 

Katara peeked into the room, barely as tall as the television where it sat on its stand. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled at him before deciding to come into the TV room. She held a small plastic box in both hands that he recognized from the master bathroom. 

“Whatcha got there, kid?” he asked as she pushed it onto the couch beside Hakoda before climbing up as well. 

She didn’t answer, scooting all the way back into the cushions and pulling the box onto her lap. Sokka stuck his head around the corner and surveyed them before running in and jumping up onto the couch on Hakoda’s other side. Hakoda rubbed his little head as Sokka sat criss cross. 

Then the astringent chemical smell hit him. He opened his mouth to ask once again what she had, but she was already unclasping the plastic lid, then making a discontented sound in the back of her throat and looking at her nails. 

“It wasn’t dry!” Sokka called out, peeking at his sister over Hakoda’s lap. 

Hakoda had a moment to decide whether he wanted to turn the volume up on the hockey game or ask what they were talking about. 

He sighed, and muted the TV before taking a deep breath and looking closer at what Katara was doing. Open box sitting on her lap, she was scrutinizing her little nails with a big frown. 

“You ruined it!” Sokka cried, planting his hands on Hakoda’s thigh to lean over and point at Katara’s hands. 

“No I didn’t! I can fix it!” 

“No, it’s ugly now.” 

“Whoa, whoa, what’s ugly? I’m sure we can fix it,” he said, intervening before Katara had the chance to snap back at Sokka. 

“We did Katara’s nails and she ruined them!” 

Hakoda held out his hand for Katara’s little hand, and sure enough there was sparkly purple paint on the tips of her fingers-- about half of it ended up on her nails, the rest on her cuticles and skin around her nails. There was a dent in the middle of the paint on her middle and ring fingers. Hakoda glanced at her other hand, still gripping the box. He recognized it then-- Kya’s nail polish box. 

“I don’t know if you should be playing with that,” Hakoda said. Then he saw Katara’s instant frown, and felt how Sokka pushed more of his weight onto his hands on Hakoda’s leg, and he backed off. “Hey, that’s okay.” 

“Can I paint your nails, Daddy?” 

“Oh…” But Katara was looking up at him with that big frown again as soon as she scented an incoming ‘no.’ “What color did you have in mind?” That frown turned, literally, upside as she looked down at the box again. She grabbed a lilac, and then a gold, and then a sparkly blue and a pink. 

“Hey, I wanna paint, too!” Sokka said, bouncing on his hands again. 

“No! I want to!” 

“Let me see!” Sokka said, laying across Hakoda’s lap then to grab at the box in her grip. 

“Whoa, okay, okay,” Hakoda said, putting a hand over the box to keep it where it was. “Sokka, don’t grab things from people. Katara, that wasn’t very nice of you, either. Do you think you two can compromise?” he asked, hoping they might realize Sokka’s nails had not been painted yet. 

The kids looked at him, and then at each other. In the way that siblings have, able to communicate silently, they seemed to come to a consensus. 

“I can paint one hand and he can paint the other,” Katara explained to him. 

Hakoda sighed to himself. “I guess you could.” 

Katara nodded, and Hakoda could imagine her telling her brother “That settles it.” Still holding the four or five colors she had grabbed, she held out the rest of the box to Sokka to pick his color. 

No one could blame Hakoda if watching his little children choosing what colors to put on his fingers--  _ fingers _ , not nails, because he’d seen what kind of fine motor skills his kids had-- made him anxious.There was nail polish remover in the box as well, but he wasn’t sure how well that might work if they spilled it on the couch upholstery. Maybe they could be convinced to move to the dining table. He was about to voice that idea when Katara slid herself off of the couch and padded out of the room, Sokka still hemming and hawing between colors in the box. He listened to the sound of her walking into the kitchen, grabbing one of the step stools and ripping off a few paper towels. She padded back into the TV room and placed the four paper towels in her hand onto Hakoda’s knee neatly before pulling herself back onto the couch. She separated the towels into two stacks of two and tossed one pile at Sokka. 

“Choose your color,” Katara said, pushing the box into Sokka’s arm before he could take it. Sokka put the towels neatly on Hakoda’s thigh before throwing himself back onto the couch to dig through the box until he came to a decision. With a satisfied sound, he set a green bottle on the couch beside his leg and clasped the box shut again, reaching down to set it on the ground at the foot of the couch. 

Katara was grabbing Hakoda’s left hand, pulling it onto her lap where she was kneeling on her knees on the couch seat facing him. He saw her pick up the first bottle of nail polish, and then saw the upcoming problem: there was no way the polish bottle wouldn’t fall over if she set it on the couch cushion. 

“Hey honey,” he said gently, moving to take the bottle from her. “Why don’t you find something flat you can put the bottles on first?” 

Katara frowned as she watched his hand take the bottle, then blinked at him before climbing back off the couch and disappearing into the hall for all of two minutes, Hakoda trying not to overreact to the sound of his office chair being slid around in the distance. Katara reappeared a moment later carrying something heavy, hefting it onto the couch and retaking her place beside him. She put the new item onto Hakoda’s lap, where he recognized it as one of his college engineering textbooks he kept telling himself he would resell at some point. 

He shoved down his initial, emotional reaction to Katara popping open the nail polish bottle and setting it down on the hard cover of his Probability and Statistics for Engineering book, her brother following suit. Katara replaced the towel on her lap and grabbed his hand again, and Sokka folded his paper towel in half before placing it on his own thigh, legs still criss crossed. He grabbed Hakoda’s other hand with more authority. 

Katara started painting on his pinky nail, transferring a glob of pink polish with the little brush. Hakoda could almost smile at the realization on her little face that she’d made a mistake if it didn’t give him an instant kick of anxiety. 

“Baby, why don’t you try smudging off all the extra paint in the bottle before you start?” he suggested, wanting to demonstrate for her if it weren’t for Sokka’s grip on his other hand. Sokka started painting green on his nail. Still, Katara followed his instruction as best as she understood, wiping the brush on the inside of the bottle neck and spreading the heavy layer of polish around, trying to brush it on as if it wasn’t running off the curve of the nail and into his cuticles and onto the skin around his nail bed. She kept stroking the brush over the nail, apparently hoping it would start drying and the excess would smooth out instead of whatever it  _ was  _ doing. 

Hakoda glanced at Sokka’s progress-- he had moved onto the middle finger, but they both could see that the first coast was not dark enough to make the light green opaque. Instead it looked like a sickly green wood stain. Sokka dipped the brush back into bottle to bring more polish onto the nail, tongue stuck out in concentration. He discovered, though, that that wasn’t going to fix the problem-- already it was smudging onto Hakoda’s finger, and Sokka sighed sharply as he 

He looked back at Katara’s situation, seeing her move the paint around a bit more. “How about you use that brush to pick up a bit of that extra paint and put it back in the bottle, sweetie?” 

Katara scrunched up her nose and pursed her lips as she tried to follow his advice. Not a lot of polish went with the brush with the first swipe, but there was an improvement with the second and the third. 

“There you go, baby,” Hakoda reassured her, the end of his sentence overlapping with a dissatisfied sound from Sokka. He looked over to his son as Katara recapped the pink polish bottle and twisted it shut. 

Sokka had added more poilsh on Hakoda’s index finger, where he had started, and the semi-dried first coat partially came back up. 

“I think you’ve gotta let the first layer dry, bud,” Hakoda told him. That nail wasn’t going to dry smooth. 

Hakoda heard the front door jiggle as it was unlocked and then swing open. 

“Hello?” came Bato’s deep voice. 

“We’re in the back room,” Hakoda called back. 

“Painting Daddy’s nails!” Katara added. 

Bato appeared in the doorway, leaning against the door jamb with a smile, leaning down to set his portfolio case against the side of the TV stand before crossing his arms. 

“You’re getting a manicure,” Bato observed. 

“Dad’s nails are too short,” Sokka groused, and Hakoda scoffed. “You should let us do yours next!” Hakoda took back that scoff. Katara sat up and looked at Bato expectantly, grip on Hakoda’s hand loosening for a moment.

“Ah, sorry kiddos,” he said, flattening his hand with his palm to the ground, showing them his nails which were already painted black, “I already got my manicure.” 

“No!” Katara said, momentarily forgetting about Hakoda altogether. “That’s boring! It’s just black!” 

Bato just smiled, not dignifying her whine with a response. He crossed over to take a look at her and Sokka’s work. This reminded Katara to grab her next bottle, a sparkly light blue that she twisted open and pulled the brush out. She went to grab Hakoda’s ring finger, but Bato hummed and intervened. 

“Actually, you want to make sure you don’t have too much. Try doing this,” he said, taking the brush and wiping it across the mouth of the bottle before putting it back in her little hand. She still got it on Hakoda’s cuticles, missing the very edges of his nail, but it wasn’t as bad as the first attempt. 

“Bato, help me too,” Sokka said mopily. He’d started on Hakoda’s other ring finger, and Bato hummed as he observed his work. “It looks good, except whatever happened there,” Bato said referring to the bumpy surface of Hakoda’s index finger. “Looks like you’ll need a second coat, huh?” Sokka nodded, swelling with pride at Bato’s praise as he turned his attention back to painting. 

Katara seemed to be getting tired of painting his nails so carefully. She was already twisting the blue shut again and reaching for the gold for his middle finger. Knowing Bato was supervising Sokka’s side, Hakoda watched Katara shake the gold bottle before struggling to untwist it for a moment, ten carefully brush off the excess paint before bringing the brush to Hakoda’s nail. She was getting better, he thought, except she still didn’t quite know how to get the paint into the crease of his cuticle and nail without painting the whole side of his finger. 

“You know how to paint the thumb? Why don’t you blow on the other nails first,” Bato was suggesting to Sokka, who complied immediately and blew on Hakoda’s fingers. He could feel the wet paint drying somewhat, an unusual sensation for him. Then Sokka was gripping his wrist and twisting it, trying to manhandle Hakoda’s hand into the right position. Hakoda compiled the best he could, keeping his laugh under his breath. 

Katara had slapped on some polish to Hakoda’s index finger, too, now and was moving onto the thumb. She was tired of the activity apparently but not about to give up. She watched how Sokka maneuvered Hakoda’s hand to paint his thumb and mimicked it with her little hands. 

“How about a second coat on those nails, then?” Bato was saying to Sokka, who nodded emphatically an went to dip his brush in the bottle again--

\--But instead knocked it off the textbook and onto the ground between Hakoda’s feet. He gasped and reached for it as it fell but wasn’t fast enough, only succeeding in sending it skittering along the floor, leaving a splotch of paint behind it. Sokka froze where he sat for a moment, and when Hakoda looked over at him he saw how his bottom lip trembled. 

“Oh, hey, it’s okay,” Hakoda started, unable to do much more with Katara still gripping his other hand and both hands having wet nails. 

“I’m sorry,” Sokka said in a small voice, and Hakoda’s chest ached instantaneously for him. 

“Hey, c’mon, let’s clean it up together,” Bato said, giving the boy a hand to help him off the couch. “Grab those paper towels and we’ll wipe up what we can, okay? How about you grab a few extras just in case.” 

“Okay,” Sokka said, hurrying off to the kitchen.

“Did any get on my pants?” Hakoda asked Bato quietly. 

“No, just a dot on your sneakers.” Hakoda nodded, relieved. Katara carried on focusing intently on his thumb nail, not bothered at all by her brother’s situation. Bato pulled a plastic bag out of somewhere in time to wave it open as Sokka came back with the full roll of paper towels. 

“That’s too many!” Katara exclaimed at him, bouncing where she sat and jostling Hakoda’s hand. “Too many!” 

“That’s okay,” Bato said, taking the roll from him and tearing off a couple before placing it on the coffee table. “Let’s wipe it up, then. Don’t move it around too much or we’ll just make a bigger mess, okay?” Sokka nodded dutifully, and the two of them wiped up what they could, throwing sullied towels into the plastic bag, and Hakoda tried his best to ignore the overwhelming fumes of all the nail polish in the relatively enclosed space. 

“Smells bad,” Katara observed simply, and Hakoda had to agree. 

“Bato, it’s drying on the floor,” Sokka whined. 

“It’s alright, just do your best,” Bato assured him, and Hakoda shot him a look which hopefully conveyed  _ Kya is going to kill us if that’s not cleaned up _ . Bato just waved him off. “Now can you grab that box of nail polish?” Sokka got up and grabbed it from the foot of the couch and handed it to Bato, who pulled out the nail polish remover and grabbed two fresh paper towels. “So we’re gonna rub it with the grain of the floor, just where there’s still polish, okay? Do you know what that means?” Sokka shrugged, and Bato demonstrated. “You see these little lines? That’s the grain. We don’t want to go against it because then we won’t get it all. Like this,” he said, demonstrating. Sokka hummed and Bato handed him a paper towel to get to work, pouring more solution onto the second towel. 

“Baby, could you go open the window?” he said to Katara, but Bato hummed without looking at him, pushing himself to his feet and sliding one of the windows open before returning to the floor beside Sokka. 

It only took a few more minutes, and Katara was blowing on Hakoda’s mismatched nails by the times Bato was tying the bag shut and standing to discard it in the kitchen garbage. Sokka took his spot on Hakoda’s right side again, but didn’t dare touch the polish bottle instead watching Katara blow on Hakoda’s left hand with a solemn expression. He still felt bad about spilling, evidently. 

Sokka scooted closer into Hakoda’s side when Bato came back, patting the half-open cushion beside him, but Bato smiled and picked the kid up for a moment to sit and replacing Sokka on his lap, earning a giggle from the previously serious boy. 

Just as Katara was starting to pile her bottles back into the box, the back door was unlocked and opened. 

“Mommy!” Katara said, sitting straight up and forgetting about the bottles she hadn’t quite fit back into their places yet. She slid herself off the couch and ran into the hall to greet Kya.

“Hey baby girl!” they could hear Kya say, then the tell tale grunt as she picked Katara up and put her on her hip. She appeared at the threshold of the TV room, Katara playing with her hair, a moment later. “What’s going on in here?” 

“Nothing!” Sokka said gleefully. “We painted Daddy’s nails!” 

“Oh really?” she said, eyes sparkling when she smiled at Sokka before looking at Hakoda. “Did Bato help?” 

Sokka nodded, then stopped to reconsider. “A little bit.” 

Bato laughed, bouncing his knee a bit to toss Sokka around playfully. 

“Well, if Daddy’s out of commission, I’m gonna need both of you to help me bring in groceries. Can you do that?” 

Sokka nodded enthusiastically, Katara’s a little more reserved as she was put on the ground, but then Sokka turned back to Bato. “You can help too,” he told him. 

“I could,” Bato said, then glanced at Hakoda. “Or I could do that second coat of polish for you. Would that be okay?” They didn’t know how to tell the kids about Bato’s bad arm just yet, so they’d been playing at new excuses for the kids whenever heavy lifting was involved. 

Sokka hummed, not happy with the excuse but clearly not going to argue. “I guess that’s okay,” he said as he slipped off Bato’s lap and followed his sister and mother back out to the car. 

“You’re not actually going to do a second coat--” he was going to ask  _ are you? _ but then Bato was already grabbing the spilled bottle of green polish. 

“And have to face Sokka’s wrath? Sorry, Koda, even I’m not willing to do that for you,” he said as he untwisted the bottle. “Give me your hand.” 

Hakoda grumbled but did as he was told, and Bato threw on a second coat quickly-- he had to admit it was a nice color once it was dark enough, and its uniformity definitely looked better than Katara’s rainbow, not that he would ever say that aloud. 

“You should probably have them go one at a time, next time,” Bato said as he recapped the paint and leaned in to give Hakoda a kiss on the cheek. “Even though that was  _ adorable _ to walk in on.” 

“Yeah, well, try making those two choose who gets to go first.” Bato breathed a laugh against his cheekbone as he kissed him again before leaning back into his own space. 

There was only a few moments of peace, where Hakoda could unmute the hockey game and settled back with his hands firmly on his own thighs so as not to smear polish anywhere, Bato’s arm over his shoulders, before the kids burst back in, now with popsicles. Kya was on their heels, and she came to stand in front of Bato and Hakoda, kneeling to take a look at Hakoda’s nails. 

“They look very nice,” she said with that same sparkle in her eyes that lets Hakoda know that if the kids weren’t present, she would be laughing her ass off at him. Instead she leaned in and kissed the top of Hakoda’s head. “And how’s your arm today, Bato?” she asked, hand trailing over the shoulder in question. 

“Ah, not too bad. Did all the stretches and all,” he told her honestly, accepting the kiss on the cheek from her. 

“So,” she said, and Hakoda could feel Bato tense beside him at her mischievous tone, “does that mean you can help me put the groceries away?” 

Bato inhaled slowly, sighing longsufferingly. “I suppose it does.” She gave him her hands and hauled him to his feet. “If that means Hakoda cooks after those nails are dry.” 

Kya threw her head back and laughed, still holding Bato’s hands. 

“I think that’s only fair.” 

**Author's Note:**

> you know those pictures of dads and daughters where his hair is full of bows and he has blue eye shadow and pink lip stick and his little tiny daughter is painting his nails?? literally hakoda and katara. thank you for coming to my ted talk 
> 
> the image of hakoda trapped in place with his kids on either side of him holding his hands and painting his nails killed me and i had to write it thanks 
> 
> i'm bakodas on tumblr (previously meteor-sword)


End file.
